From: Peterfabriani@aol.com
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 20:10:20 BST
Peter: Hello Sam and All,
Hi all,
To continue my campaign in this thread....
One way of describing my point is to say that the intellect is highly
deficient in discerning Quality. Logic or mathematics (the most purely
intellectual activities) can discern Quality in tightly restricted spheres -
this is discussed by Pirsig in ZMM when he talks about what is left when
Quality is removed from our understanding of the world. And it would seem a
little odd to consider SOM as completely blind to Quality when is has so
successfully static-latched itself into our culture.
Peter: I am not sure who IS advocating that intellect is sufficient for
discerning Quality? Quality produces intellect and therefore intellect may
only evolve in accordance with DQ.
Yet most of what we truly value in life is not discerned by our intellect
(ie by logic and reason divorced from our emotions, as 'intellect' was
defined in my dictionary quote) but rather by our judgement. Our judgements
of value are what build up the fourth level; indeed, they are the
constituent elements of the fourth level. Hence the concern of 'human
rights' (which is a social pattern of value directed by the fourth level),
in order to preserve those things that are of Quality. Amnesty International
does not exist to preserve the possibility of intellectual innovation; it
exists to save people, because people are valuable, they have quality.
Peter: The notion of Human rights IS an intellectual pattern of value. From a
social perspective, Human rights may get in the way of one celebrity
dominating societies, and may therefore be seen to be intellectual values
privileging themselves over and above a purely social pattern.
To my way of thinking, the essence of the fourth level is the existence of
an autonomous individual: autonomous because the individual is (for the
first time) capable of establishing their own laws by which to act (auto
nomos). The individual has freedom of choice - the individual is thereby
open to dynamic innovation. And the individual is able to develop that
freedom through the development and application of the virtues: it is the
wise person that is most free and in touch with Quality, not the
intellectual.
Peter: I see you have a tight grip on this idea and wish to see it through?
Any notion of individuality is a static social pattern. I see this as a
dynamic social activity and not an intellectual activity; intellectual
patterns don't require celebrity status to survive - they can lay dormant for
hundreds of years before continuing to evolve. Individuals die biologically
and in moments of pre-intellectual awareness like ecstatic states.
Again, I think this is something that Pirsig himself articulates in ZMM, not
least when he discovers the Sophists properly, and their teaching that 'man
is the measure of all things', and Pirsig writes, "Quality! Virtue! Dharma!
That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not
pristine 'virtue'. But arete. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of
Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before
dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the
Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that
of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along."
Peter: Before individuality? No! Individual celebrities were at work at this
time and so was intellect - Reason and its product concepts are not all their
is to intellect. Excellence can be just as much a matter of intellect as it
can be of social quality, but Reason is excellent to the degree that it can
be used for those things which require rationality to operate. Sophocles was
an individual in that he had excellence and not in that which delineated him
as an individual rational entity.
In fact, the medium that they chose was poetry and tragic drama - the
Sophist approach derived from that. Hence Sophocles....
Peter: Poetry lives in a storm of inspirational madness. Poetry was an oral
tradition whereas written text is the product of a rational?
Perhaps we can only understand Lila fully, when we combine it with a proper
appreciation of the full argument in Zen, and allow ZMM to critique some of
the elements in Lila. Or perhaps in Lila Pirsig has lapsed back into a
Platonic/metaphysical desire for redemptive Truth. More things to
explore....
Sam
Peter: Indeed.
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